WHAT WE SHOULD FIGHT FOR I
By LORD EUSTACE PERCY
[This is the frst of a short series of articles by writers of varying points of view. Next week's contribution will be by Mr. A. L. Rowse.} WHEN a man is asked in cold blood what he will fight for, his only honest answer is the old Bohan motto : Pour ce qui me plait. In other words, he will refuse to answer in advance. He will fight in hot blood or not at all, when he " has found a thing to love " and not before. In matters of domestic government we know this well enough. The common law of England and America binds every citizen to the duty of repressing civil commotion, but for ordinary purposes the duty is delegated to a professional police ; we do not trust in " hue and cry " to preserve order. Whether, in an extraordinary crisis, a whole people will mobilise itself to resist violence, will depend on the impulse of the moment and on the risk involved. A General Strike in England may fire the citizen's sense of duty ; but in a gangster-ridden Chicago he will be content to carry a gun in his own defence and to live as quietly as he can.
It is the same with nations. In a world where war is an affair of professional armies, statesmen can conclude treaties of alliance, or of collective security, as they can enact laws requiring the police to suppress unlawful assemblies. But no such treaty can effectively bind a whole people to accept in advance the universal risks of modern war. The authors of the Covenant of the League of Nations deliberately refrained from so binding their peoples, even though they contemplated a drastic limitation of armaments , in a world of unlimited arma- ments such a bond is unthinkable. In all our grave talk about treaty systems, about England's frontier in the Low Countries or about the indivisibility of security in Europe, we tend to forget this distinction. When it comes to asking the ordinary citizen to fight, we should do well to remember that he will face death for a senti- ment, but never for a policy. Today, as never before, it is not enough for the statesman to know What his people need ; he must know what they care fOr. What they need, what they think is the " national interest,", they will pay for and expect their professional servants, the politician and the soldier, to get for them ; but what they care for they will fight for.
What the Englishman cares for is plain enough. He cares for his idea of personal liberty, and he will fight for it against all prigs and bullies who seem to threaten it. He will be slow to recognise the threat ; he has no taste for preventive wars, in Schleswig-Holstein or in the Ukraine ; but when at last he feels that the threat is nearing his borders, he will rise against it. And, feeling thus, he has perhaps been better represented in recent months by the Trade Union Congress than by the Govern- ment or the Parliamentary OppositionS or the League of Nations Union. In themselves, issues like the public law of Europe or the frontiers of France and Belgium leave him cold. He did not care much about Italy's defiance of the League ; he began to be moved only when he thought he saw in Italy's invasion of Ethiopia an example of the danger in which a free people stands when faced by a modem dictatorship. That example has set him on the alert against both Germany and Italy ; he feels that he has ignored one challenge and must be ready to take up the next one. He will regard any unprovoked move by Germany against France or Belgium as such a chal- lenge ; but in that event he is more likely to fight foi freedom than for the safety of the Channel Pints.
One thing more. Before he fights even the devil, he wants to be sure that the devil has had fair play. In his long experience of government, he knows that men do not become violent without a grievance, and he has found that most grievances are remediable. The one thing he will not fight for is a mere assertion of legal right. He knows that every man's rights are someone else's wrongs, that possession may be nine points of the law but can never be the whole ten points. And he believes that, in virtue of this knowledge, he is better afremedying grievances than his neighbours. Consequently, he does not like to be too deeply committed to common action with the " top dogs " of the world at any given moment. The first article of his creed of freedom is a free hand for himself.
What foreign policy, then, will best fit the Englishman's feelings ? The answer seems to be : no alliances, but a Monroe Doctrine. The Doctrine may be announeed in the form of a League Covenant or a Locarno : a sort of social contract which defines what Britain regards as a just cause of war, without placing her in a special relationship with any particular signatory. Or it may be announced by unilateral declaration. But, the greater the danger of war, the more precise must be the definition of just cause,- if it is to convey any real warning to the. aggressor. For this purpose the vague and universal language of the Covenant is out of date ; still more out of date is Britain's special guarantee of the Memel settlement. The most practical definition is a twofold one : a violation of the frontiers of Western Europe and a violation of the independence of Egypt. This double definition has already been made : the one half in the Treaty of Locarno, the other in the declaration of 1922. The only question that remains is : in what form shall the Locarno half be embodied now that Locarno itself has broken down ? • • Since last March the British Government has been boggling over the answer to this question. Hence, mainly, its present unpopularity. There is no doubt what answer public opinion would like to give : pending a new Locarno with Germany, a unilateral declaration by Britain, definite enough to convey assurance to France and warning to Germany, precise enough to give British diplomacy a free hand - on all other issues. As between such a free hand and the receipt from France and Belgium of the reciprocal guarantees contemplated in the March Protocol, public opinions rightly or wrongly, prefers the first. For, above all else, the Englishman is impatient of deadlock and is disposed to reject all forms of international co-operation which confine British diplomacy to heavy-handed questionnaires and the sterilities of the conference method.
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